Landscape Lighting Blog
Do Permanent Trim Lights Raise Your Power Bill? Let’s Do the Math
I get asked this on probably half of my quotes and I’ve never written it down anywhere, so here it is. Short answer: no, not really. It’s a few dollars a month for most houses….
Why the Lights at the End of Your Run Are Dimmer Than the Rest
This is one of those problems where people live with it for years and just assume that’s how it is. You walk out front, the first couple of fixtures near the transformer look…
Outdoor Lighting Gets More Important as You Get Older
I do a lot of work out in Sun City and Sun City West, and a few years back I started noticing something about those jobs that I hadn’t really thought about before. The…
What Arizona’s Dark Sky Rules Actually Mean for Your Outdoor Lighting
Got a call from a guy in Fountain Hills back in the spring. He was pretty worked up. He’d put in landscape lighting himself, big weekend project, and somebody had said something…
Outdoor Lighting for Your Phoenix Airbnb
This one’s for the short-term rental folks, because I’ve done a bunch of these lately and there’s a side to it most owners don’t think about until I point it out. Here’s the…
What Monsoon Season Does to Your Outdoor Lighting
We’re in it right now, so the timing on this is good. If you’re new to Phoenix, monsoon season runs roughly from mid-June into September. And if you grew up somewhere with normal…
Why Your Neighbor’s Permanent Trim Lights Look Cheap (And Yours Don’t Have To)
You’ve seen the house I’m talking about. Drive through any neighborhood in Gilbert or Mesa around the holidays now and there’s always one. Permanent trim lights on the roofline,…
How to Light a Saguaro (and Other Desert Plants That People Always Get Wrong)
Okay so this is one of those things I end up explaining at almost every consultation, and I figured I’d just put it down somewhere. People want their landscape lit. Fine. Good….
Why Your Outdoor Lights Keep Failing in Arizona (And How to Fix It)
If you’ve lived in the Valley long enough you’ve probably had this experience. You install outdoor lights, they look great for a while, and then stuff starts failing. A fixture…
Pool Lighting Options for Phoenix Homeowners
Almost every home I work on in the East Valley has a pool. That’s just how it is out here. Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, Queen Creek, it feels like 80 percent of the houses were built…
LED vs Halogen Landscape Lights: Why We Stopped Installing Halogen in Phoenix
I’m going to date myself here but when I first started doing landscape lighting the standard was halogen MR16 bulbs in every fixture. That’s just what everyone used. Brass…
Front Yard Landscape Lighting Ideas for Arizona Homes
I talk about backyards a lot. Probably too much. But the front yard is where initial impressions happen and truthfully most people in the Phoenix area are completely ignoring it…